Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
Saying no accurately depends on a calendar you actually keep. You cannot check whether Thursday is free if Thursday looks blank when it is not.
This is what makes the fiddly work of maintaining a diary worth doing. Nobody keeps a calendar for the pleasure of keeping one. You keep it so that when somebody asks, you can look, see the two things already sitting there and answer honestly in five seconds instead of finding out a fortnight later.
Qur’an and Sunnah
let him whose provision is restricted spend according to what God has given him (Quran 65:7). Spending within what you actually have is the principle, and time is the version of it most people never check.
لِيُنفِقۡ ذُو سَعَةࣲ مِّن سَعَتِهِۦۖ وَمَن قُدِرَ عَلَيۡهِ رِزۡقُهُۥ فَلۡيُنفِقۡ مِمَّآ ءَاتَىٰهُ ٱللَّهُۚ لَا يُكَلِّفُ ٱللَّهُ نَفۡسًا إِلَّا مَآ ءَاتَىٰهَاۚ سَيَجۡعَلُ ٱللَّهُ بَعۡدَ عُسۡرࣲ يُسۡرࣰ ا
and let the wealthy man spend according to his wealth. But let him whose provision is restricted spend according to what God has given him: God does not burden any soul with more than He has given it- after hardship, God will bring ease
Qur’an 65:7read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Work on measuring habit argues that what makes a routine hold is automaticity, meaning it runs without a decision each time, rather than how often you do it. That points to attaching the calendar check to a fixed moment in the day so it stops needing to be chosen. This is measurement research on habit rather than a trial of diary keeping.
Gardner B, Abraham C, Lally P, de Bruijn GJ. (2012). Towards parsimony in habit measurement: testing the convergent and predictive validity of an automaticity subscale of the Self-Report Habit Index.. The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
An honest answer about your time needs an honest record of it in front of you.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
A task needs smoothing at both ends. If it looks big and horrible you will not begin it, and if the middle is full of snags you will not see it through.
If it is out of sight it is gone, so build the system around what you can see. Clothes on an open shelf and books in the drawer is a perfectly good arrangement when that is what works.
Some jobs never move because they were never yours. Somebody else wanted them and you wrote them down to be kind.